What line of fiction has sent a chill down your spine?

[MrsDanversAteMyIpod]

Have just read 1984 for the first time (-aged 32 - late I know) We did Animal Farm at school but I didn't get around to reading this until now.

I was fairly gripped and enjoying it to the point where Julia and Winston are echoed with 'You are the dead' & omg, it was so chilling..couldn't put the blardy thing down till the end

Any MNers experienced any similar literary chills?

Funnily enough, same book -

"If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face? forever."

Ugh.

Ooh yes, that would have been No.2 for me

How funny - I read the title of the thread and I immediately thought "he loved Big Brother" - from the same book!

Well bearing on mind the whole Room 101 bit completely creeps me out, I think we can safely say it's a pretty chilling book!

There was a line from War of the Worlds that used to make me shiver. I'll have to try and remember Google it!

freakyily i was going to say something from war of the worlds, but i just saw the concert so is fresh in my mind.

can't think at the moment, but MrsDanvers your nn made me larf

i was reading The Turn of the Screw by Henry James and i reached a point where the hairs on the back on my neck stood up

Oh gosh: I have just read 'A Clockwork Orange' which was one big chill from start to finish!

Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper. The ending and the way she moves round the room.

I LOVE 'The Yellow Wallpaper' - good one!

"All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses, his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind."

does it for me

The last page of Timeoleon Vieta Comes Home by Dan Rhodes. I gasped.

Oh the bit in the last Harry Potter when Kingsley's patronus appears and says something like "Scrimgeor is dead, the ministry has fallen. They are coming."

they're making the yellow wallpaper into a film, should be interesting..

in "We need to talk about Kevin" when she turns on the patio lights....

They're making the Yellow Wallpaper into a film? How on earth will they manage that? It's not as if it has much of a plot really... find it very hard to imagine how they'll film it given that most of it takes place inside her head.

Definitely a chilling one though. I just feel so sorry for the main character - think enforced bed rest would be enough to drive anyone bonkers!

The Yellow Wallpaper as a film? Not sure about that - it is so short for one. I suspect there will be lots of padding with conversations with the husband.

lots of films seem to come from short stories, but I don't see how we would get inside (erm, forget her name)'s head.

Actually, Mrs Danvers - I found Rebecca very creepy! Also Jane Eyre and the Secret Garden. i would say that it was because I was only young, but I was reading The Secret Garden aloud to dd1 and I still found this whole idea of someone else in the house who you don't know unnerving.

Then Edgar Allan Poe. Not to be read when you're alone in the house... [terrified emoticon]

RoseoftheOrient - I read "We need to talk about Kevin" only around 2 months ago but baby brain plus reading in snatches around feeds means I can't remember what happened at the patio... can you fill me in please?!

Is it at the end when "you know who" and "you know who" are "you know where"?

Well, the last few books I've read have included World War Z so there were plenty of zombie-based chills from that. One in particular sticks out - when the narrator is interviewing a sculptor who makes figures of zombies - says something like 'he has just finished his latest masterpiece, a man wearing a torn Baby Bjorn'

Currently reading Darwin's Children so I can quote it verbatim:

"The mob torched one of Augustine's goddamned camps," Mitch said. "They burned the children in their barracks. They poured gasoline around the pilings and lit them up. The guards just stood back and watched. Two hundred kids roasted to death. Kids just like my daughter."

Lissya that's the bit in Kevin. Sent chills down my spine at how bloody awful it was as a book. Introspective, predictable twaddle.

The Yellow Wallpaper's been touted as a film for ages. It would only be loosely based wouldn't it as there's not much there to translate across. Some good short stories made into films. Brokeback Mountain springs to mind.

Boy In The Striped Pyjamas has the chill factor. Reminded me of reading Goodnight Mister Tom as a child.

Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox too. Couple of lines in that.

The bit in Jude the Obscure when the murder/suicide of the children is revealed. I was so shocked I just sat there swearing at Hardy for doing something so awful.

Re 1984, when DH and I were just getting used to the endless exahusting toddler demand to repeat a certain action or whatever, we used to say to DS1 'Not me, not me -- Do it to Julia.'

The Yellow Wallpaper looks good!... have added it to Amazon wish list, thanks to MN recommendations it's now 15 pages long, I joke not

That line from Harry Potter chilled me too SunshineMummy, it's the last bit 'they are coming',

SLF, yes Rebecca is v creepy. Particularly when she encourages her to jump out of the window, but there isn't one line in particular that sticks out in my memory iyswim.

Points to Wittering for most original use of 1984 quotes I think